For a long time I have known the name
of Augustus John and his connection with Liverpool.
I keep on seeing
his portraits, such as The Marshesa Casati with her flame red hair. Luisa Casati looks like a Vamp.
Not as much is known of his sister Gwen.
He had been a prominent player in
Liverpool's Art School and in its standing in the wider establishment.
It appears that for him being there and passing on his valuable
experience and energy to another generation that, we are all the better for it.
Augustus Edwin John had trained at The Slade School
where he was a star.
He was appointed to the Liverpool Art Sheds 1901-02 to replace Herbert Jackson who had joined up to serve in the Boer War.
He was appointed to the Liverpool Art Sheds 1901-02 to replace Herbert Jackson who had joined up to serve in the Boer War.
It was said he had a brilliant
technique and a uninhibited approach and his Bohemian personality was
well noted.
This drew many students to his life classes. He looked
Bohemian almost like a Jesus of Nazareth character with long flowing
locks of hair down to his shoulders. His sister Gwen was totally the
opposite more of a wallflower.
He married Ida in 1901, she was also a
Slade student.
He painted many University figures while in Liverpool.
There were many artists around, C.J
Allen, Herbert MacNair and Charles Reilly among many others were to become prominent figures in
Liverpool, Allen being a one time assistant to Hamo Thorneycroft.
The
Art Sheds were a place where ideas and thoughts could be brought to
fruition by those who attended.
John settled for a short while at 66
Canning street after short stays with friends. His studio then was No
2 Rodney Street. In 1902 after the birth of their first child David
the John's moved to 138 Chatham Street for five months.
Gwen visited them that summer.
He then moved to Fitzroy Street London
shortly after a failed election to Liverpool Academy in 1902 but he
was back and forth to London by then.
He took a trip to Wales with John
Sampson in 1903 and was still in Liverpool 1904 when Charles Reilly
became Professor of Architecture. Charles Reilly would champion a new
classical style moving away from the Arts and Crafts that was the
fashion of the day, with haste.
Many of his drawings of Liverpool
models were sent via William Rothenstein for exhibition at the Carfax
Gallery.
He was made Honorary Member of Sandon
Society of Artists 1908.
Brought up in the middle class town of
Tenby, the Johns were born the children of a lawyer. Their mother had
died when they were young and they had a nanny to look after them.
Gwen was shy and both her and Augustus
showed a talent for art from an early age.
They stayed aloof from the goings on in
the town. Showing an air of respectability for a middle class lawyer.
He taught his children moral values. Those children would rebel
against the steadiness of their fathers strict Anglican principles.
Augustus who was born 1878 reversed the
tutoring of his father and headed for London to enrol in the Slade
School of Art. He was uncertain of himself and his work was methodical
and unremarkable. The revelation and new sensations of the model in
his first life class would be something he would remember. He worked
hard and in his second year his work became steady and his old master
style astonished the tutors. Henry Tonks proclaimed him the best
draughtsman since Michelangelo. His line became sure and his style
became that of the bohemian.
He discovered women. Woman is beauty and
every artist loves beauty so every artist must love woman. This was
an excuse he needed as he liked the company of woman above anything
and the art gave him his chance to discover his own way of life
centered around the female form.
Augustus became a legend at The Slade
for his drawings but struggled with a brush but won an award for a
biblical scene which was contrived from the old masters.
Gwen joined him there but remained in
the background around Augustus's centre of attention approach. He
commanded the signature John claiming it in his own pushy way.
They lived together for a while. In
several cellars and basements and It was life of differences and she
found it more difficult than he.
He was overpowering and she restrained.
He married a friend of Gwen's, Ida to the dismay of
her family. She adored Gus.
Gwen set off for France with a friend
in 1903. Walking from Bordeaux to Rome she wanted to take her time
and paint. It was said Whistler who she met in Paris influenced her
after she abandoned her walk in Toulouse.
Montparnasse was her home living frugally in order without mess yards from Modigliani who arrived
shortly after her. She painted many scenes with flowers that adorned her
room.
Inside her there always seemed to be that her inner eye was
focused towards the church.
She posed for other artists
including Rodin at the age of 63.
He was the greatest living artist
and she fell in love with him and his prodigious sexual appetite.
She
was obsessed by him but he would not be able to meet her demands
though he really loved her.
He paid her rent and worried about her
cat.
I often think is that Gwen when I see a Rodin sculpture.
The memory of Whistler stayed with her.
Her style stays strong from the start. She painted ordinary folk
while Augustus later went for the big blockier strokes laying paint
in a style of abandon. That worked.
But he always retained a
conservatism within the shadows of his work he always searched where
Gwen seemed to have already found what she wanted to do. He dressed
his sitters in fancy dress. She painted people that she identified
with. Introvert and unassuming.
Augustus decided the Gypsy life was for
him and he hit the open road falling in love with Dorothy McNeil who
he met while living with Ida. His drawings of her show her as a real
timeless beauty. Gwen talked her into becoming his muse and they set
off for a life with Ida. The romanticism of the Gypsy stayed in his
heart and he would take his caravan to Dartmoor with the two woman
looking after Ida's newly born child.
He went to Paris.
Kindly drawn pictures of Caspar show a
tenderness that did not represent the reality. Ida died in a Paris
hospital giving birth.
His wife had posed for him while looking after
seven children.
Romelly John is quoted as saying”They
had to compromise from the Gypsy life to the outside world”.
His paintings of the family show
affection.
He then went to North Wales and he
painted the mountain......that captivated him like one of his lovers.
He then escaped further into nature but returned to Dorset painting blue pools,
perhaps some of his best. His work shows impossible dreams and
fantasies that dwelt in his mind.
He painted Yates and Shaw while in
Ireland and was becoming a society painter in demand capturing the
spirit of the sitter. His work never lost its uncertainty.
Provence called him to the classical
land of his dreams. Roman lands of Greeks and gypsy spirits.
Martigues in Province became his home before
the tourists arrived. He moved north and lived in complete simplicity
with no running water just a well.
His children recalled him as a
overbearing character who always vied for attention.
He built a studio in Chelsea while
partying in the evenings with the rich and famous of the day.
He was
at the peak of his career. He would stride the Kings Road and
Chelsea.
In 1913 Gwen became a catholic. This
was at the deepest time of her affair with Rodin. Maybe a rejection
of her upbringing she found a monastery and the nuns wanted her to
paint religious pictures. Rodin disliked her praying in Church. “I
am like a little animal groping in the dark” she told Gus. She
moved, with her cats into a single room where she seemed happy. She
took time to visit Gus. She rented a room by the sea in Brittany
where she drew the local children wearing the black pinafore of the
school. She drew the innocence of the little folk with tenderness.
She controlled the paint more than she could people. She did not like
to sell her work.
She collapsed in Dieppe right off the
train and she died a few days later.
Augustus threw party's which were funded
by his work but was still searching and in Friars Court he painted
with a passion and intensity that was noticed by his sitters who were
lit perfectly while he mixed his paint telling the sitter off if they
moved a bit. His children found the sittings a strenuous time when he
painted them, always alone except while he painted Dylan Thomas when
one of his children was employed to fill the sitter with beer and
keep him happy.
He painted T.E Lawrence.
Lord Leverhulme was so upset with his portrait that he cut out the head (since only that part of the image could easily be hidden in his vault) but when the remainder of the picture was returned by error to John there was an international outcry over the desecration.
His work was his life but forever he
searched for inspiration and perfection.
He became unfashionable and the
excitement had gone in the 1950's.
The flame had died. His last painting
was a painting of the Camargue gypsies paying homage to their patron
saint.
He called it a failure and said 50
years from now “I will be known as the brother of Gwen John”.
He missed the gypsy life, the outdoors
and said “I wish I had never left Wales”
In 1961 he died aged 83. “Give me
another hundred years” he had said “And I will become a very good
painter”
In the latter years he would sit and
stare at his sisters paintings and the fountain of her work that
showed her moving towards her own abstraction. She did not see small
things in a small way. The things she owned and people she knew, her
cat's.
She exiled herself and the conflict
within them both was played out through the canvasses they left
behind. The essence of her life and existence. The little lark ascending.
Did they have the same insecurities
that drove them on.
Where else can you find a brother and sister on a
journey through art like the John's.
Gwen John 1876-1939
